Tag Archives: Sean Hannity

Excellent detailed piece on Sarah Palin by journalist Michael Joseph Gross in the October 2010 issue of Vanity Fair …

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Sarah Palin: The Sound and the Fury

Former Republican Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin speaks at the "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington on August 28, 2010.

Even as Sarah Palin’s public voice grows louder, she has become increasingly secretive, walling herself off from old friends and associates, and attempting to enforce silence from those around her. Following the former Alaska governor’s road show, the author delves into the surreal new world Palin now inhabits—a place of fear, anger, and illusion, which has swallowed up the engaging, small-town hockey mom and her family—and the sadness she has left in her wake.

But even a friendly interview can be treacherous. In a sit-down with Fox News’ Sean Hannity Wednesday night, the former Alaska governor confused Iraq and Iran several times.

Watch: :

Asked about how to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons, Palin responded by suggesting we get tough with Iraq.

“We have allies who are as concerned about Ahmadinejad’s actions as we are,” she said. “Cutting off the imports into Iraq, of their refined petroleum products. They’re reliant … on those imports. We have some control over there. And some of the beneficial international monetary deals that Iraq benefits from, we can start implementing some sanctions there and start really shaking things up and telling Ahmadinejad, nobody is going to stand for this.”

By the look of Fox News‘ video footage, one would think that Sarah Palin‘s new book “Going Rogue” was in such demand, it was drawing tens of thousands of people into overcrowded book stores.

That’s because on Wednesday, the network showed 2008 footage of Sarah Palin on the campaign trail while discussing the “huge crowds” who were attending her book tour.

Fox has since made the following statement:

“This was a production error in which the copy editor changed a script and didn’t alert the control room to update the video,” said Michael Clemente, senior vice president of news at FOX.

This new oversight comes off the heels of Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show” calling out Sean Hannity for running video in September of a hugely attended Tea Party protest in Washington. At the time, however, Hannity was discussing a far less attended rally that took place in early November.

Below, watch videos of both Fox News flaps. Is this a simple accident or a troubling trend?

Barbara Walters will sit down with former Vice Presidential candidate and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for a five-part series of ABC News interviews to begin airing on "Good Morning America" Nov. 17, 2009.

West Allis — Less than two weeks before the release of her memoir “Going Rogue,” former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was on message during a Friday night speech to anti-abortion activists at State Fair Park.

“Let’s simplify, we’re pro children,” Palin told thousands of people who attended a $30-a-ticket fund-raiser for the Wisconsin Right to Life Education Fund.

In a personal and passionate speech, Palin lauded the state’s anti-abortion movement for legislative advances achieved over time.

For once, mainstream journalists did not retreat to the studied neutrality of quoting dueling antagonists.

They tried to perform last rites on the ludicrous claim about President Obama’s death panels, telling Sarah Palin, in effect, you’ve got to quit making things up.

But it didn’t matter. The story refused to die.

The crackling, often angry debate over health-care reform has severely tested the media’s ability to untangle a story of immense complexity. In many ways, news organizations have risen to the occasion; in others they have become agents of distortion. But even when they report the facts, they have had trouble influencing public opinion.

In the 10 days after Palin warned on Facebook of an America “in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel,’ ” The Washington Post mentioned the phrase 18 times, the New York Times 16 times, and network and cable news at least 154 times (many daytime news shows are not transcribed).

Like the U.S. army major who “saved” a Vietnamese village by destroying it, the patriotic traitor seeks to preserve his country by bringing it down. Recently I watched Seven Days in May . In this political thriller, an American president has negotiated a nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviets over the objection of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a four-star general played by Burt Lancaster. After the Senate ratifies the treaty, the general is certain the Soviets have pulled a fast one and will soon launch a first strike. So he plots to overthrow the government. The president gets wind of the coup and, in a tense scene scripted by Rod Serling, confronts the general in the Oval Office: “You want to defend the United States of America, then defend it with the tools it supplies you with — its Constitution! You ask for a mandate, general — from a ballot box! You don’t steal it after midnight, when the country has its back turned.”

The president’s words are dismissed by the general, who can’t accept that his warped sense of patriotism has driven him to commit treason. Of course, he’s a fictional character. Sarah Palin, however, is real, although she often acts like something conjured up in a novelist’s overheated imagination. Her deliberately distortive statement on President Obama’s health care plan, in which she again exploits her son Trig, is just the latest rhetorical IED detonated by an increasingly unhinged right-wing insurgency. The Soylent Green scenario she paints, in which the elderly and disabled will be euthanized and then presumably rendered into energy bars, should disqualify her from further consideration as a serious contender for high office. And yet her supporters will hail this patriotic traitor as a great American.